Colonization Missions 1e
= Colonization Missions = Posted by: Narayanan Ramachandran, Freelance Consultant Colonization projects are pursued and sponsored by hypercorps, scientific institutions, governments, and even powerful (and insanely rich) individuals. Divided as transhumanity may be, many factions are actively involved in or preparing for one colonization project or another. These can range from hypercorp indentures hoping to establish a new life for themselves to brinkers literally pushing the boundaries of isolation even further to ambitious mercurials attempting to create their own society, and everything in-between. The Planetary Consortium seeks to claim the galaxy for their own one colony at a time, while the autonomists try to prevent exactly that from happening. Terraforming hypercorps research new ways to turn a piece of rock into a habitable environment, hackers and rogue scientists seek places to experiment in safety and isolation, and crime syndicates set up secret bases to do god-knows-what. Rich oligarchs stake out their own private ﬁefdoms, while those concerned about transhumanity’s collective future spread out to the stars just to make our species harder to extinguish. The ﬁve Pandora gates within the solar system serve as a choke-point for these efforts, giving definite advantages to certain actors and impeding others. The Pathﬁnder Colonization Initiative is the juggernaut, founding new colonies on a monthly—and soon to be weekly—basis and maintaining an infrastructure on Mars to support the dozens that have already been established. In the race for new lebensraum, the Morningstar Constellation and the Titanians lag behind the Consortium, followed by the autonomists, numerous hypercorps, and other factions. Among the most under-represented are the LLA and the ultra-paranoid Jovian Republic, each maintaining nothing in the way of extrasolar colonies. Where to start Colonization missions mean two things—someone before you had all the fun exploring the unknown, then someone else decided to set up a permanent camp. While preparation is essential, the actual planning, creation, or acquisition of gear and other resources differs from one project—and also from one sponsor—to another. While the Consortium has access to almost every possible resource you can think of, acquiring the components and nanofab blueprints for certain colony necessities can be a challenge for the Love and Rage anarchist collective controlling the Fissure gate. Likewise, the Consortium and hypercorps have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of indentures to employ as near slave labor simply by promising a body and a home, whereas the autonomist and others rely on ﬁnding intrepid individuals willing to set aside everything they know and step boldly into the unknown. Filling the Roster Once a colonization project is approved, the sponsors select the cadre of ﬁrst-generation colonists. Depending on the colony’s future purpose and the resources allocated to the colony, selection processes range from thorough evaluation of required skill sets and psychological proﬁling to downloading random indentures into cheap synthmorphs and throwing them through the gate to lay the groundwork. Vacant scientific, managerial, or even therapeutic positions or missing skill sets are bought, programmed, requisitioned, or even conﬁscated and added to the roster, given adequate funding. The ﬁnal mission selection typically consists of a variety of scientists, technicians, engineers, manual laborers, and security experts, accompanied by a small team of doctors and psychologists. An average ﬁrstgen colonization crew runs between twenty to sixty people, not counting any indentures or AI brought onboard for simple manual labor and administrative tasks. Given the extensive (and lucrative) media coverage, aesthetics as well as social and rhetoric skills are given higher priority in many Consortium- or hypercorp-sponsored projects. Laying the Founding Despite nanofabrication, minifac capabilities, and automated habitat construction options, erecting and maintaining a colony is hard work. To stabilize a habitat or fortify an initial complex of shelters as quickly as possible, colonists rely heavily on construction drones and robots controlled by AI, infomorphs, and manual laborers sleeved in synthmorphs, worker pods, or other morphs more ﬁt for the particular exoplanet environment. The ﬁrst priorities for any new colony are shelter, security, sensors, and communication. Pre-fabbed or auto-erecting habitats provide limited living and work space until larger facilities can be constructed. Pioneering colonists can expect their quarters to be cramped and crowded at best. As the colony grows, new additions are tacked on in an organic fashion, though any extra space these might provide is often occupied by secondary waves of colonists. Security and sensors both keep an eye on the safety of the colony and nearby gate, while recording as much data on the exoplanet as possible for long-term study. Where possible, satnets and mesh routers are put into place so that colonists may constantly keep in contact and monitor their new environment. Supply Chain and Logistics Though colonies become more independent over time, few are self sufficient. To ensure a colony’s survival, a well-coordinated supply chain needs to be set up to source, coordinate, and distribute whatever goods, minerals, equipment, technology, or other resources are needed. In a worst-case scenario, a colony’s logistics must be prepared for a communication breakdown or gate malfunction isolating them from the basecamp on the other side for an extended period. Despite mapping missiles and surface scans identifying available natural resources, many colonies have to improvise with what they brought with them through the gate and send out scouting parties to hopefully ﬁnd local resources identical to or similar enough to elements known to transhumanity. Managing the local logistics associated with local mining, farming and harvesting, or even chemical processing is another challenge for which a colony needs to be prepared and equipped. While most settlements are centered in the gate’s immediate vicinity, special circumstances might favor a colony to be erected further away. Archeological sites located around the ruins of an unknown alien culture or mining camps erected nearby significant natural deposits often become permanent colonies and outposts from which transhumanity expands further. When supplying remote colonies, a semi-permanent base is erected close to the gate as a logistics and supply hub. Loading and transportation equipment is used repeatedly for each supply run to the colony and then secured for storage until the next delivery, or left with the colony in case of deliveries inward from the gate. Transportation mostly consists of all-terrain ground vehicles or skimmers, in rare occurrences a small spaceport is established for colonies on nearby moons or asteroids. As of yet, no (known) colony has become big enough to warrant the construction of a space elevator. Running a Colony Once a colony survives the initial labor pains, don’t assume its existence will get any easier. Keeping a colony alive can be as difficult as establishing it, maybe even more so. Over time, colonies can be afflicted with all manner of crises. Gate malfunctions may cut them off from their home base for indefinite periods of time, leaving them without critical supplies. Tensions between people living in stressed, cramped conditions may erupt into civil disturbances or violence. Sudden environmental changes like volcano breakouts or tectonic shifts could threaten their very existence. Sustainability With the exception of a few colonies specifically tailored for synthmorphs, most colonies have at least some biomorphs who are dependent on the habitat’s life support functions; should it fail, they would be in extreme danger. For this reason, and given the many indentures found in colony populations, many colonies have high percentages of synthmorphed personnel. This also has the beneﬁt of reducing the supplies the colony requires. Those who do sleeve in biomorphs often choose biomods that are less resource-intensive and customized for close quarters living. Nevertheless, many colonies seek to create sustainable living for biomorphs to limit supply needs and to be better prepared for emergencies. Greenhouses and faux-flesh carniculture vats are common, and when possible local sources of water are tapped (often by harvesting and melting ice). Even in hypercorp colonies, community makers are common, and cornucopia machines are often pre-loaded with major blueprint libraries and less restricted than within the inner system, in order to fulfill the colony’s early needs. Energy sources range from solar cells to nuclear batteries and fusion reactors, often in combination and with backups. Some colonies use power plants that take advantage of abundant local fossil fuel supplies. Security Depending on the sponsor’s resources or the colony’s expected proﬁtability, security might vary from a few hunter-killer drones to a platoon of combat morphs and an AI-controlled military satellite network. Besides protecting the colony itself, guarding supply convoys between the settlement and the gate is the second main task of security forces. Security teams also specialize in guarding long-range expeditions for matters like resource surveying, scientific studies, and xenoarcheological digs. Protecting a colony from outside threats isn’t the only thing security is on hand for, of course. Mining colonies and other settlements with large numbers of indentures often boast additional physical security to act as a police force, keep the labor force in check, and prevent internal strife and dissent among the population. Most sponsors subcontract out security operations to hypercorps or freelancers that specialize in these services. This work can be tricky, as security contractors often find themselves embroiled in disputes between workers and management or between hypercorps ﬁghting over resources or property. In Pathfinder/Consortium-linked colonies, security forces and colonial regimes are expected to abide by Consortium laws. In others, local laws or simple frontier justice may apply. Autonomist outposts are, of course, self-policing. Psychological Effects Living in a smelly, overcrowded tin can on a snowball circling an alien sun for months on end can be stressful for everyone involved. Add in the fact that you are light years from the nearest other transhumans, connected only by a device that everyone fears and few trust, and maintaining a positive attitude can be a challenge. Add in the social fault lines inherent in indentured servitude and similar hierarchical relationships and cultural divisions, and it is not uncommon to see tensions between different colonist sub-groupings come to a boil. Various colonial initiatives seek to remedy these problems with regular psych proﬁling and counseling as well as offering numerous media diversions, especially VR. They also often turn their heads to less savory reliefs, such as recreational drugs, prostitution, and gambling. The costs of gate transfers usually inhibit options like rotating staff or mandatory vacations. A few strict colonies employ more controlling measures, such as mandatory psychosurgery sessions, implants, or drug regimens. Productivity Though some colonies are established purely to beachhead transhuman expansion and grow new population centers on extrasolar worlds, the majority of them are founded with additional purposes in mind and are effectively support bases for resource exploitation, archeological digs, scientific labs, and similar projects. This means that the colony is not only dependent on that project’s success, but that it is answerable to whoever sponsored it. If a colony becomes too expensive, doesn’t meet production quotas, or threatens to become ungovernable, there is a very real chance that the plug will be pulled. There are already dozens of failed or deliberately abandoned colony attempts, leaving behind littered traces of transhuman settlements on various exoplanets. A few of these have been resettled by other sponsors, but many remain unused. The primary drawback to answering to remote bosses, of course, is that those in charge usually know very little about the colony’s actual conditions. Sometimes this is deliberate, through careful management of information sent back home by colonial administrators. In practice, this means that orders suddenly come through the gate that are exceptionally inconvenient or otherwise problematic to the colonists. No one likes being told they have to double their resource extraction in the middle of an ice planet’s blizzard season, or hearing that their water supply will be rationed until their mother hypercorp gets around to sending a new water ﬁltration plant through, or receiving orders to delay a project critical to the colony’s well-being in order to pamper an oligarch’s nephew who is visiting the colony for an adventurous lark. These sorts of disconnected priorities and interests between colonists and remote sponsors are a leading source of unrest, sabotage, and even outright revolt. Colonial Media While exploration gatecrashing missions draw an impressive amount of consumer media interest, there is just as much public attraction to the lives and daily circumstances of extrasolar colonists. Many colonies contract with media hypercorps that chronicle the fate of the colony in high rez detail in serialized installments. Embedded journalists produce local news reports that are periodically distributed back to the solar system and even back out to other extrasolar colonies. The gate corps are known to use AIs to review, edit, and censor these reports, however. A select few colonies are in effect reality experience shows, with key colonists X-casting their lives, all bundled and sold as an entertainment package to audiences back in the solar system. Many colonies are a calculated investment risk for their hypercorp sponsors, so it is no surprise that they go to great lengths to make colonial affairs seem exotic, dramatic, and just dangerous enough to be adventurous and thrilling but not scary. Among the Consortium media, in fact, expensive ad campaigns extol the virtues and glamor of being a colonist, co-sponsored by the Pathfinder Colonization Initiative. Those who buy the hype and sign up are usually in for a shock when they end up assigned to some backwater mining camp on the thirtieth ice moon of a nondescript gas giant. Sidebar: Debriefing the Dead Kyla Free Aster. December 27, 1983. Chicago. Lived there most of my life. City. Rogers Park, with all those lakefront liberals. I still managed to be to the left of them! The Fall? Like Autumn? Well, I— I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. I remember the war, of course. Did something happen to the Earth? No, like I told them, I’m not sure what happened. I remember some, some sort of machine landing on my shoulders, but then— No, no, I was in Chicago. I was headed home, there were alarms. And then somebody’s robot landed on my head. After that, well, everything’s a bit fuzzy. Somehow I ended up in, um, Skoyz, I guess, with that group of people. The gatecrashers, as you call them. I, uh, yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure what’s happening, really. This whole gate thing is new to me. Look, I’m a bit concerned. Did something happen to the Earth? What … what are you saying? Are you saying that I—that I died on Earth? During this war? I—yes? This body? Is something wrong with it? I’ve never resleeved. I—I thought something felt weird. But it’s all been so confusing. Wait. W-whose body is it?